Integral image elements which use a lenticular lens sheet or a fly's eye lens sheet, and a three-dimensional integral image aligned with the sheet, so that a user can view the three-dimensional image without any special glasses or other equipment, are known. Such imaging elements and their construction, are described in "Three-Dimensional Imaging Techniques" by Takanori Okoshi, Academic Press, Inc., New York, 1976. Integral image elements having a lenticular lens sheet (that is, a sheet with a plurality of adjacent, parallel, elongated, and partially cylindrical lenses) are also described in the following United States patents: U.S. Pat. No. 5,391,254; U.S. Pat No. 5,424,533; U.S. 5,241,608; U.S. Pat. No. 5,455,689;U.S. Pat No. 5,276,478; U.S. Pat No. 5,391,254; U.S. Pat No. 424,533 and others; as well as allowed U.S. Patent application Ser. No. 07/931,734. Use of barrier viewing sheets having alternating opaque and transparent lines, instead of a lenticular lens sheet, is also well known.
Integral image elements with lenticular lens sheets use interlaced vertical image slices which, in the case of a three-dimensional integral image, are aligned with the lenticules so that a three-dimensional image is viewable when the lenticules are vertically oriented with respect to a viewer's eyes. Similar integral image elements, such as described in U.S. Pat No. 3,268,238 and U.S. Pat No. 3,538,632, can be used to convey a number of individual two-dimensional scenes (such as unrelated scenes or a sequence of scenes depicting motion) rather than one or more three-dimensional images. Such elements then, when tilted through a range of angles with respect to a viewer's eyes (by moving the element and/or the viewer's eyes), can display different images (whether different perspectives of the same scene) and/or unrelated images, and/or a sequence of images depicting a motion sequence of events. Alternatively, a lenticular image and lens can be slid (either manually or my a motorized arrangement) with respect to one another in a direction orthogonal to the lenticule direction. This can provide for convenient display of a motion or other lenticular image, without changing the angle between the viewer and the lenticular image element. With improvements in technology, the effects obtained can be startling.
Integral image elements using reflective layers behind the integral image to enhance viewing of the integral image by reflected light, are also described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,751,258, U.S. Pat. No. 2,500,511, U.S. Pat. No. 2,039,648, U.S. Pat. No. 1,918,705 and GB 492,186.
In a typical method of assembling a lenticular type of integral image element, an original negative is exposed from stored digitized data of a composite lenticular image on a film writer. A suitable film writer is the Symbolic Sciences International Fire 1000 and the LVT Model 1620B, available from Light Valve Technology, a subsidiary of Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, N.Y. A suitable negative exposure technique is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,276,478. After photographic processing, the negative is printed, typically by a projection enlarger, onto a suitable film- or paper-based photographic print stock. After processing, the lenticular composite print is coated with adhesive, aligned with a lenticular lens sheet, and pressed against the lens sheet to permanently adhere to it in proper registration with the printed lenticular composite image. However, it is also known to write the lenticular image directly onto a back side of a lenticular lens sheet which is coated with a suitable receiving layer, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,349,419 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,279,912. Furthermore, such "writing" of the lenticular image can be temporary, as in a display produced on a CRT or Liquid Crystal Display ("LCD") screen immediately adjacent the back side.
In forming a lenticular image, the various images from which a lenticular image is formed are decomposed into strips or lines (which may be one or more pixels in width) and these are interleaved and aligned behind a corresponding lenticule at its focal point, in a known manner. Such interleaving is, for example, described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,506,296, U.S. Pat. No. 5,278,608, U.S. Pat. No. 5,276,478, U.S. Pat. No. 5,455,689, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,534,164. This process is computationally intensive and requires considerable time for lenticular images of high resolution. Furthermore, since different lenticular lens sheets have different physical parameters, such as lenticular pitch, the required calculations can change for a lenticular image of given content for different lenticular lens sheets.
Often however, in the preparation of a desired lenticular image, the customer for the final lenticular image is remote from a lenticular image production facility which has lenticular lens sheets of different parameters, the required high computer power, and the necessary high resolution printers, and also alignment devices (which may or may not be part of the printer). Further, creative personnel may be present at such sites to aid in subjective judgements as to variations in lenticular image characteristics in order to obtain a final lenticular element of good quality. However, in most cases a customer's approval is necessary before the job can proceed to its next step. Conventionally, this required actually producing a rough lenticular image element based on oral discussions with the customer. This would then be delivered to the customer for review. Based on customer input, one or more such rough lenticular image elements might be required. Such a procedure is exceedingly costly, time consuming, and tedious.
It would be desirable then, to provide a means by which lenticular image elements can be created at a central facility, but which still allow a remote customer to provide approval prior to production of the final lenticular image, without having go through the foregoing tedious procedure.